


black ink; or, the ballad of the third forsythe pendleton jones

by Em11134



Series: ballads [4]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Because being a gang kingpin doesn’t usually end well, F/M, Jughead is an emo traumatized dreamer who skinned a lady, So expect bad parenting and lots of blood, So much angst, That will be dealt with here, because he’s bookish like his mama, oh: also lots of cinematic & literary references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 10:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15117842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em11134/pseuds/Em11134
Summary: Eight vignettes from the tragic life of Jughead Jones.





	black ink; or, the ballad of the third forsythe pendleton jones

  **verse one**

The ink-haired boy sits cross-legged on the grass and dog-ears pages of his favorite books. He touches the dog-eared pages of his mother’s favorites, reverent. The neighbor’s children sing, “Jughead, jughead, big ears, small head.”

He does not bother explaining that he is not a jughead. He knows. He is the third Forsythe Pendleton Jones. He signs his crayon drawing “FP 3,” smiling, crooked, wearing the crown his father gave him.

His father, the second Forsythe Pendleton Jones, teaches him facts about serpents. The boy cannot find them in any book, so he tries to hold them in with his crown; but they fly into the clouds when his father is gone (He has not seen his father in five weeks.) He asks his mother, “Why do serpents live in flowerpots?” and she cries.

He will hold the stories in his crown, and his father will come back. He will write the stories down, and his mother will dog-ear the pages. She will wrap him in her arms.

This is how the story goes, isn’t it? A boy is a prince because his father is a king, and he becomes a king. This boy will be a good king. He will be Arthur Pendragon, pulling a holy sword from a stone; he will be Richard Lionheart, vanquishing enemies on a battlefield; he will be Prince Charming, swaying in the moonbeams with a golden-haired princess, no space between their bodies. He will be better, though, because he will be a bard-king.

**verse two**

The ink-haired boy’s father leaves and comes back and leaves and comes back. The boy does not want to be another Forsythe Pendleton Jones. He doesn’t want to be a prince. He doesn’t want to be a jughead.

The storyteller is the same no matter his nom de plume. The story is the same without its cover. He springs open his father’s silver switchblade and slices the cover off of his mother’s favorite book. He springs open his father’s silver lighter, engraved with his initials and the American flag, and lifts the flame toward his crown.

“Jug!” cries the flame-haired boy on the playground. “Juggie!” cries the golden-haired princess. He touches the flame to his crayon drawing instead, the one his mother said was “sloppy.”

The teacher frowns, and his mother cries. Jughead leaves. He is locked in a stone cell. There is no one there, not even a firefly, not even a cockroach, not even a bedbug. There are no books to read, so he tells himself stories. Then he comes back.

**verse three**

Jughead has a sister, the first Forsythia Pendleton Jones, with black hair that floats around her head like she is flying through the clouds. Their mother calls her “my pretty little pixie” and wraps her in her arms. Their father calls her “jellybean.” He puts on his new Sherpa jacket and tells his wife, “I want to be a better man for her.” For her, but not for Jughead.

Jughead tells his sister, “We’ll be Claudia and Jamie Kincaid, sleuthing at the art museum; we’ll be Hansel and Gretel, killing the witch, eating fistfuls of candy; we’ll be Meg and Charles-Wallace Murray, rescuing our father from Camazotz.” She claps her dimpled hands and smiles.

In the classroom, no one smiles at him-no one, of course, except golden-haired Betty, no one, except flame-haired Archie. They are the Three Musketeers; they slice their palms and shake hands to share the blood, all for one and one for all. They scramble along the banks of the Sweetwater River with a yellow pup, and they blow dandelion fluff into the breeze. They sit in the diner and clink their pink milkshakes.

**verse four**

Jughead’s father puts on his leather jacket and twists open a bottle of rum. His mother flies away, clutching his sister like contraband. They leave, and they do not come back.

Flame-haired Archie, good ol’ Archie, laughs with the bad boys that nobody minds. Golden-haired Betty, princess Betty, is far away under the sunbeams.

Jughead sits in the diner in his father’s Sherpa jacket and orders a coffee, black. He watches girls smile at rascals, even as they share milkshakes with boys with softer hands. He watches boys in letterman jackets slap each other’s backs. He watches them, but they do not see him. “All the better,” he thinks. “I will write their stories down.”

**verse five**

His father staggers into the trailer, sweating rum, singing Springsteen, and turns his pockets inside-out. Damp and crumpled tens and twenties fall onto the carpet. Jughead does not want them.

He shuffles into the Twilight Drive-In office. “Any projectionist experience?” the owner asks. Jughead answers, “I’m quiet, and I have sharp eyes.”

The pockets of his Sherpa jacket fill with crisp and folded ones and fives. He leaves the trailer for the projection room, clutching contraband popcorn, making the film spool and unspool and spool again.

He throws out his old books, opens new ones, watches new stories on the screen. He will be Philip Marlowe, walking mean streets, neither tarnished nor afraid; he will be Amelie Poulain, making magic for her neighbors; he will be Frank Serpico, shouting truth despite the target on his back. He will be a loner hero.

**verse six**

A flame-haired boy, not good ol’ Archie, but one of the bad boys nobody minds, washes onto the banks of the Sweetwater River. His blood is on the hands of the second Forsythe Pendleton Jones (Jughead doesn’t see this yet. He doesn’t know.)

Betty leads Jughead into the school newspaper office and says, “We have to be the heroes.” They will be Nick and Nora Charles; they will be Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson; they will be Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. She holds his hand as they watch flames light the sugary forest, as they sit in a stone cell, as they tiptoe through a gothic mansion.

He climbs through her bedroom window and kisses her, gentle, among the pink flowers. (Jughead has never kissed a girl before.) She smiles. She does not want Archie; this is not a knife in his blood brother’s back. She wants him, Jughead, the third Forsythe Pendleton Jones. He opens her hands and kisses the bloody slices there. She takes off his crown and runs her fingers through his ink-black hair. She touches his face and says, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

**verse seven**

His father is locked in a stone cell. Betty holds Jughead’s hand, clutches him, tighter and tighter, and he feels blood spilling from the slices on her palms. “Don’t go,” she begs. “I love you. We’ll be Romeo and Juliet, but live happily-ever-after instead.”

She’s not enough. Jughead will need a new family. He walks through the glowing neon light to the bad boys that everybody minds. They call him by his father’s name and say, “We’re all for one and one for all.”

Good ol’ Archie leaves. He wears a letterman jacket; he is one of the bad boys nobody minds. Betty leaves (She doesn’t want to, but he doesn’t see this yet. He doesn’t know.) Jughead picks up a leather jacket, recites facts about serpents, and walks onto a battlefield, where his new brothers smile as they spill his blood.

A pink-haired girl he doesn’t want inks a crown over the snake on his arm. She climbs into his lap and kisses him, not gently, then wipes away the spot of blood.

**verse eight**

His father says, “I’m trying to be a better man for you, Jug.” He’s locked in a stone cell because he wanted to be a hero for his son.

Jughead’s new brothers say, “You can be an outlaw king.” Jughead smiles, crooked. He will be a hero for his father. He will be a hero for his princess. He takes off his crown, but no matter; there is one on the snake on his arm. He springs open his new switchblade. His brothers and the pink-haired girl hold down his enemy so he can vanquish her. He slices her arm, then tosses her limp body and her inked skin onto the side of the highway. He rides down the highway on his motorcycle.

Archie comes back with blood on his hands and says, “You’re my brother.” Betty comes back with blood on her hands and says, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Jughead unzips her pink lace dress with its ruffle hem as she kisses him, gentle, then not so gentle, and her moans echo in the empty trailer. She clutches him as he shouts truth despite the target on his back, insisting, “I am a hero! I am a king!”

He is not a loner. He is not a hero. He is tarnished and afraid. He has been reading the wrong books, watching the wrong movies; he didn’t see, he didn’t know. He will not be a bard-king. He will be locked in a stone cell, he will die by the switchblade he lived by. There is only one ending: blood will have blood, over and over, until there are no more Forsythe Pendleton Jones.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Reading the others in this series is not necessary, but it will add much more dimension to this, because they all reference one another.
> 
> This was inspired by the Patti Smith song, “Horses,” specifically these lines:
> 
> “The possibility was a blade, a shiny blade, I hold the key to the sea of possibilities.”
> 
> “Looked at my hands, and there's a red stream.”
> 
> “Angel looks down at him and says, ‘Oh, pretty boy, can’t you show me nothing but surrender ?’ Johnny gets up, takes off his leather jacket. Taped to his chest there's the answer. You got pen knives and jack knives and switchblades preferred.”
> 
> “Shined open coiled snakes white and shiny twirling and encircling. Our lives are now entwined, we will fall, yes, we're together twining.”
> 
> The Philip Marlowe description comes from a line from Raymond Chandler’s brilliant essay on the mystery genre, “The Simple Art of Murder,” & his description of the ideal detective character: “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”
> 
> Thanks so much for reading & indulging this! Please let me know what you think via kudos or comments! As always, I accept constructive criticism.


End file.
